If You've Never Needed a Sanctuary, Read This

It's Sunday morning. I wake in a rental house in Connecticut near family, turn over and grab my phone. "At least five people were killed and 18 injured in a shooting at an L.G.B.T.Q. nightclub in Colorado Springs on Saturday night, police said." I sink back into the mattress.

My body feels defeated. This is the same body that created an open Zoom room for strangers to gather in the hours following Uvalde. This is the body that wants to help. Yet on Sunday morning this body says There's nothing we can do about this so don't even try. So I do nothing.

Monday morning, I wake to an email chain among a list of women leaders that was kicked off by one who'd written: "Where is the outrage?" I dig within myself for the answer and admit to these women that I am becoming inured to all the gun violence in this country regardless of who is on the receiving end.

I admit it to them and I'm admitting it to you because it's the truth of me. And because it's okay to feel defeated from time to time. Ongoing battle against the elements of inhumanity will do that to you. But if you take on a mantle of defeat permanently, it's tantamount to dying yourself. I don't want to do that, and I don't want you to do that either.

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There's an ideology growing ever more rampant that says LGBTQ+ people are deviant and should not exist. That says that from health care, to schools, to books, media, and conversation, we should not take into account queer people in any positive sense.

A candidate for school board right here in my own city of Palo Alto, the heart of Silicon Valley, ran on such a platform this fall. She lost, but did manage to garner more than four thousand votes. Many candidates at the local, state, and federal level are feeling emboldened to spew this kind of hate. And make no mistake, their rhetoric foments violence against LGBTQ+ people.

I stand against this, not just because my partner and I are queer, but because I am black and biracial and for a lifetime have been told I am the wrong kind of person. Because I know what it feels like to walk into a diner and be stared at because you don't look like you're from around here. To feel the fear that rises up from your gut when someone's eyes signal that you're in their crosshairs.

Club Q is a place to feel safe and seen, a place to feel unbridled belonging. All humans need that. And those of us who are considered problematic by others take a deep exhale when we find it.

Because none of us wants to feel like someone else's prey.

We're not animals in a food chain who should have to be ever-vigilant about a predator.

We're humans.

We're more evolved than that, and we need to act like it.

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Even if you've not needed a Club Q, maybe you, too, have a place similar to it in your life. Perhaps it's a club, a choir, a hair salon or barbershop, a bowling alley, a coffee shop, a bar, a community center, a place of worship, or some other place where you know with certainty that you can just walk in and be yourself and be treated with dignity and kindness. Perhaps you go there not because you're mistreated elsewhere, but because no place else gives you quite the wonderful sense of belonging you feel there.

Perhaps you have no such place but wish you did.

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When a tragedy happens in a person's community, a secondary compounding loss can occur when folks don't even seem to know about it because despite it being in the headlines it doesn't seem to pertain to them.

So, whatever your background is and your identities are, all the LGBTQ+ people you know would love to know that you care about what happened at Club Q Saturday night in Colorado Springs and that you anticipate that they may be hurting or feel afraid. Particularly those who are younger or for other reasons are prone to being less empowered or more alone. Even if you know just one such person, you can do this, and you can make a difference when you do. Search your heart for a time when others came after you. If that has never happened, search your heart for the care and concern you feel for the person you love the most, and imagine harm coming to them. Turn your memories, your feelings, into compassion for the LGBTQ+ person or people in your life right now. Text them your thoughts.

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Today's when I stopped feeling defeated by the news of Sunday morning and started feeling like I could once again do something. In addition to writing this for you, here's the kind of thing I've been texting to gay, lesbian, bisexual, and trans friends today:

I'm thinking of you and just sending love across the miles against the hatred and horror in Colorado.

So, if you need a template, feel free to use that.

Go, treat another human humanely.

Today. Every day. Always.

🏡 You've been in Julie's Pod, an online community of over 12,000 people who want to open up about our lives, be vulnerable, learn and grow, and in so doing help others learn and grow.

➡️ If you want to read an article about one of the heroes of the evening, an unarmed Army Vet named Richard M. Fierro, who, along with a drag queen armed only with her stilettos, stopped the shooter in his tracks, read this beautiful account here.

💜 If you are queer or are closely connected to queer folk, remember that Audre Lorde taught us that "joy is an act of resistance" so continue to love yourself and revel in community with others who are like you.

💌 If you've read this far, you are definitely entitled to a free "Julie's Pod" sticker for your laptop or water bottle courtesy of me and the U.S. Postal Service. If you want one, just DM me your snail mail address (or if you don't know how to DM a person, just email me@lythcott-haims.com). I promise I will toss your snail mail address in the trash as soon as I pop the sticker in the mail to you!

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✍ If you left a comment on any post before today, I've probably responded. The comments are often quite thoughtful, so please feel welcome to join the conversation whenever you feel like it. For those who can't comment publicly, I've set up a hotline 1-877-HI-JULIE where you can leave an anonymous voicemail to let me know what's on your mind, whether about a piece of mine or something going on in your life.

🧐 If you're interested in my work more broadly, check out my website my social media, where everywhere I'm @jlythcotthaims.

🌲 Did you know that the name of my city, "Palo Alto," means "tall tree" in Spanish? I'm pleased to say that the voters of Palo Alto just elected me to a seat on our City Council. I ran as an outwardly queer person because representation matters, particularly as hate rises.

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📸 Cover Photo Credit: Getty Images/Nimit Virdi/500px